BOOK VI. CHAPTER I. THE GERMAN POPES. THE evil of the degraded papacy lay deeper: it was absolutely necessary to rescue it entirely and for ever from the Counts of Tusculum and the Barons of Rome. The only Murmurs remedy was the appointment of a stranger. were heard that no one could canonically be elected Pope, who had not been ordained Deacon and Priest in the Church of Rome. The insulting language of the Germans was, that in the whole Church there was scarcely one who was not disqualified either as illiterate, or as tainted with simony, or as living in notorious concubinage.a Clement II. Suidger, the Bishop of Bamberg, was consecrated Pope at Sutri; the first Pope consecrated out of Rome." On the arrival of the Emperor at Rome, the usual appeal was made to the Roman people whether they knew one worthier to be Pope. The German soldiers stood around; the people preserved an obsequious silence. The Bishop of Bamberg was led by Henry himself to the papal throne; the people seemed to assent by their acclamations. Suidger took the name of Clement II., the first, it might be hoped, of a new line of apostolic pontiffs, a "Neminem ad Romanum debere ascendere pontificatum, qui non in eadem ecclesiâ presbyter et diaconus." -Bonizo, apud Efalium. "Ut in tantâ ecclesiâ vix unus reperiri potuit, quin vel illiteratus, vel simoniacus, vel esset concubinatus." Bonizo is a bad historian for the past, but an unexceptionable evidence of the violence of the Italian feelings against a German pope. Compare Leo Ostiens, and Victor III. b So at least says Bonizo. Compare Herman. Contract. A.D. 1096. • If Benzo of Albi is to be believed, Henry told them to elect any one present. The Romans replied, that in the presence of the Emperor the election was not according to their will: "Ubi adest præsentia regis, non est electionis consensus in arbitrio nostræ voluntatis."Benzo, apud Menckenium, i. 393. B 2 4 Christmas, 1046. LATIN CHRISTIANITY. called after the immediate successor of St. Peter. Henry and his Empress Agnes received the imperial crown from the hands of the new Pope. The coronation was celebrated with unusual pomp and solemnity. The Pope exacted from the religious Emperor, not merely the most full confession of faith, the oath of fidelity and of protection to the Roman see, but of chastity, justice, humility, and charity. The Pope enforced on the Emperor, the Emperor with the most profound submission pledged himself in the face of heaven to observe these Christian virtues.d Jan. 1047. The first act of reformation, which the religious part of Christendom expected from the promotion of this blameless and holy stranger to the Roman see, was the summoning a Council to brand the all-prevailing vice of the times. Simony was condemned in the strongest general terms and in all its various forms; but even this Council was obliged to mitigate its censure. The severer bishops proposed the absolute degradation of any one of their order who had been guilty of this sacrilegious sin; they were reduced to the melancholy confession, that the Church would be nearly deprived of all its pastors, since the ordination by a simoniacal bishop annulled the orders. Whoever was knowingly ordained by a simoniacal bishop, was bound not to exercise his functions till after forty days' But Clement sate alone in his unworldly holipenance. ness; the Council, assembled to reform the Church, was interrupted, if not broken up, by a fierce dispute for precedence between the Archbishops of Ravenna, of Milan, and of Aquileia. The decision in favour of the German Archbishop of Ravenna, unpopular doubtless with the Italians, was confirmed by threats of excommunication against the other contumacious prelates, if they should renew the strife. Rome herself might seem impatient of d Cenni Monumenta, ii. 261, contains the ordo for the coronation of Henry and Agnes. Höfler devotes many pages to the ceremony, i. 236-250. e So universal was this crime, that the Abbot Guido, when Boniface of Tuscany, the father of Matilda, one of the most pious churchmen of the day, went to make his annual confession at the monastery of Pomposa, thought it right to Hunc Bonifacium, ne venderet amplius, ipsum Labb, Concil. sub ann. CHAP. I. DAMASUS II. HIS DEATH. 5 foreign rulers; the fatal climate asserted her injured supremacy. Clement II. died before the close of the year. A.D. 1047. of Be Benedict IX. in Rome. Nov. 8, 1047. A bold attempt was made to reassert the claims nedict IX. He appeared in Rome under the protection of the Marquis of Tuscany, and held the pontificate for nine months But he fled again on the first appearance of the new Pope environed by German soldiers: he had been abandoned by the Tuscan Marquis." For the obsequious clergy and people had in the July 16, meantime sent to Germany to submit themselves 1048. to the nomination of the Emperor. Haliward, Archbishop of Lyons, declined the perilous advancement; the choice fell on Poppo, Bishop of Brixen. He had hardly time to reach Rome, to take the name of Damasus II., when he too fell a victim to the summer fever. Aug. 9, 1048. This pontificate lasted but twenty-three days.* Damasus II. This rapid succession could not but give rise to reports of foul means, employed by the unscrupulous Italians to get rid of these strangers, no less dreaded for their austerity, than hated for their usurpation of the Roman rights. But Italy was overawed by the commanding character and unshaken authority of the Emperor Henry III. No secular power dared to offer resistance, there was no Cisalpine prelate, whose lofty piety and courageous sacerdotal dignity could venture, or warrant opposition. Rome and Italy again looked submissively to the trans-Alpine monarch for a successor to these two short-lived pontiffs. Yet this absolute nomination to the papacy by the uncontrolled authority of the Emperor could not but alarm the jealous hierarchical spirit throughout Europe, as well as in Italy. The flagrant venality and vices of the Roman clergy might justify, for once or for a time, the intervention of the supreme secular power. The declared aversion of Henry to the dominant evil of simony, the lofty language which he used concerning the reformation of the Church, his own profoundly religious life, might tempt the most zealous churchmen to acquiesce in a despotism, commended by such results, and exercised so much for the honour and for the welfare of Christendom. But the clergy, ever as intuitively and sagaciously jealous to detect the secret encroachment of any principle dangerous to their power, as skilful in establishing any one favourable to their interest, were not off their guard. There was one, whose searching eyesight was watching, who was warning, and taking measures to awaken that dread of secular interference, which came even countenanced by such manifest and uncontested advantages. Hildebrand, in his exile in Germany, was steadily surveying the course of affairs. The imperial choice fell upon a prelate, in whom, although of noble descent, and nearly allied to the Emperor," the churchman predominated over the subject of the empire. Though with such claims to the highest advancement, supported as it now too rarely was, with the fame of transcendent piety, avouched by vision, wonder, and spiritual communion with the other world, Bruno had contented himself with the poor and humble bishopric of Toul." There he was distinguished by his unimpeachable holiness, his gentleness to those below him, (he constantly washed the feet of the poor,) but no less by his inflexible assertion of all the rights and possessions of his see, and the privileges of his order. According to his affectionate biographer, his person was beautiful, his charity boundless, and he had a rare power of affecting his hearers as a preacher, even hardly less as officiating in the services of the church. He was accom Leo IX. m The Emperor Conrad's mother and the father of Bruno were cousins german. Conrad spoke of his "consanguineum affectum avitæ propinquitatis." -Wibert, Vit. Leon. IX. i. 18. et.... "The early life of Bruno is related by his affectionate and admiring follower, Archdeacon Wibert, with its full portion of legendary marvel.Apud Muratori, Script. Ital. iii. |